#634 "TEI-conformable" is meaningless

[Martin Holmes]

This previous bug:

http://sourceforge.net/p/tei/bugs/582/

dealt with some inconsistencies in usage and formatting of "TEI-conformant" and "TEI-conformable", but it did not address the elephant in the room: "TEI-conformable", as it is defined, is meaningless:

"A document is said to be TEI Conformable if it is a well-formed XML document which can be transformed algorithmically and automatically into a TEI Conformant document as defined above without loss of information."

This applies to any XML document. Even extreme cases of documents containing no TEI-like information at all, any information can be represented using e.g. feature structures. I suggest we remove this phrase from the Guidelines, and thus substantially simplify the USE chapter.

[Sebastian Rahtz]

i think we knew what we meant when we invented the idea if "conformable", but I suggest that it has not caught on as a concept in the intervening years, and it may be simpler to drop it.

[Laurent Romary]

There is a nice concept of subsumption between XML trees here, though. :-)

Le 9 janv. 2014 à 10:58, Sebastian Rahtz rahtz@users.sf.net a écrit :

i think we knew what we meant when we invented the idea if "conformable", but I suggest that it has not caught on as a concept in the intervening years, and it may be simpler to drop it.

[bugs:#634] "TEI-conformable" is meaningless

Status: open
Created: Wed Jan 08, 2014 08:53 PM UTC by Martin Holmes
Last Updated: Wed Jan 08, 2014 08:53 PM UTC
Owner: nobody

This previous bug:

http://sourceforge.net/p/tei/bugs/582/

dealt with some inconsistencies in usage and formatting of "TEI-conformant" and "TEI-conformable", but it did not address the elephant in the room: "TEI-conformable", as it is defined, is meaningless:

"A document is said to be TEI Conformable if it is a well-formed XML document which can be transformed algorithmically and automatically into a TEI Conformant document as defined above without loss of information."

This applies to any XML document. Even extreme cases of documents containing no TEI-like information at all, any information can be represented using e.g. feature structures. I suggest we remove this phrase from the Guidelines, and thus substantially simplify the USE chapter.

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Laurent Romary
INRIA & HUB-IDSL
laurent.romary@inria.fr

[Piotr Banski]

I'm not so sure. We may be talking about subsumption between information structures here, but these are one or two steps of abstractness away from XML serializations, whether the latter conform to the TEI syntax or not. At least, this is how I understand Martin's point.

[Piotr Banski]

+1 for dropping this. Whether it used to be meaningful (maybe in the broader context) at some point, or not, it has always been a source of confusion, in my experience.

[James Cummings]

Assigning to Paul Schaffner to summarise and report to council

[Martin Holmes]

Council agreed to implement 2014-06-30.

[Paul Schaffner]

Just started this by rmoving one example at revision 12921